A horse-drawn buggy carrying an Amish family of seven was rear-ended by a car on Highway 48 in Coal County just before 10 p.m. Sunday, injuring everyone aboard in a crash that happened roughly 150 feet from the family's own driveway near Clarita.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers said the buggy was traveling northbound on Highway 48, about a mile north of Highway 31, when it was struck from behind, according to KOKH. The six buggy passengers and the buggy driver all suffered various injuries, the station reported. The family has been identified in local emergency reporting relayed by Amish America as Dewayne Shrock, his wife, and their five young children, the eldest of whom is eight years old. The crash occurred in the Clarita Amish settlement.
The driver of the car told investigators she was manually adjusting her vehicle's thermostat and did not see the buggy ahead of her, per the station's report. Oklahoma's inattentive-driving law, Title 47 Section 11-901b, requires drivers to devote their full time and attention to the road.
Horse Breaks Free, Possibly Saving a Trapped Infant
Coal County Volunteer Fire Department Chief Williams said the force of the impact flipped the horse, buggy, and its occupants upside down into a roadside ditch, ejecting six people from the carriage, the same account notes. An infant was left trapped in the wreckage, and the chief said the child's life was likely saved because the horse broke free from the buggy, giving rescuers room to reach the baby.
According to NHTSA, as cited by Oklahoma.gov, motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death for children, with an average of two children under 14 killed each day in 2023.
The scale of the medical response reflected the severity of the injuries. Four medical air ambulances and two ground ambulances were called in to fly and drive the injured family members from rural Coal County to hospitals in Oklahoma City, per the same account.
Oklahoma has trauma centers including OU Medical Center in Oklahoma City and Saint Francis Hospital.
A Tight-Knit Community Along a Busy Rural Highway
The crash unfolded practically in the family's front yard — the collision site sits about 150 feet from the Shrock driveway, on a stretch of two-lane highway that carries a mix of fast-moving cars and slow horse-drawn buggies. Oklahoma traffic law requires buggies and other slow-moving vehicles under 25 mph to display a reflective triangular Slow-Moving Vehicle emblem, a requirement outlined in posts shared within Amish safety advocacy groups on Facebook.
The Clarita Amish settlement dates back to 1978, when Old Order Amish families relocated from Ohio and Indiana, making it one of four active Amish settlements in Oklahoma, according to TravelOK.com. The community has weathered internal change before — in 1994 it split after voting to allow steel-wheeled tractors for field plowing to cope with Oklahoma's hard clay soil, a decision that pushed some stricter traditionalist families to move back north to more conservative orders, as detailed by 405 Magazine. Horse-drawn buggies are part of transportation in the Clarita Amish community.
Despite its small size, the settlement plays an outsized role in the region. Coal County hosts the community's annual Amish School Consignment Auction every September, an event that draws roughly 10,000 visitors for handmade goods, quilts, and farm equipment near the intersection of Highways 48 and 31. Demographic data compiled by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College puts Oklahoma's total Amish population at under 1,000 people, with the Clarita settlement making up a single church district of roughly 100 residents — a small, close-knit enclave along a highway now the site of a serious crash.
